


And Your Quiver Full

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [13]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brothers, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Gen, brothers being brothers, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23575927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: "Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are children born when you are young.  Happy is the man who's quiver is full of them." - Psalm 127Fruit and hugs might not fix everything for ever, but they're enough for now.A moment in time between Rex and his littlest vod.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano
Series: Soft Wars [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 57
Kudos: 835





	And Your Quiver Full

**Author's Note:**

> Because Rex didn't just adopt one Jedi

Ahsoka taps an ‘I’m here’ against the door frame. Without needing to think about it, Rex softens his knees and braces.

Toes planted in the back of one knee to push herself up, knees around his waist, arms around his neck. Ahsoka slumps with her head on Rex’s shoulder and heaves a world-weary sigh.

It’s unbearably cute. It’s the type of cute that would be weaponized. Rex determines to start rotating who is on homework monitoring duty; she’s been spending way too much time under Jesse’s dubious influence.

“What do you want then?” he asks dryly. He adjusts her so her legs aren’t in the way of his workspace.

“Nothing, ori’vod1,” she says. She nuzzles into his neck and sighs again.

Rex rolls his eyes. He was decanted at night, but it wasn’t _last_ night. “If you say so.” She’ll get to it when she gets to it.

The officer’s mess is quiet save for the tap tap tap of the knife against the cutting board. Whatever the original intent of the officer’s mess was, Rex has never allowed his command to use it to isolate themselves from the rest of the troops at mealtimes. There’s no better time to get the pulse of the Company, everyone from Command on down to the newest private is more comfortable having conversations over food. The officer’s mess, then, has become more of a hobbyist kitchen, with an expanded prep area.

Rex holds up a thin slice of fruit over his shoulder. Ahsoka bites it from his fingers immediately. “Fruit?” she asks, vaguely annoyed.

Togruta are actually omnivores, Kix has confirmed. They can and should eat plant based foods on occasion; they miss essential nutrients from a meat-only diet. Try to convince Ahsoka of that though.

“Muja,” Rex agrees. “It’s very traditionally Mandalorian.”

Jesse’s not the only one who knows how to be casually manipulative.

Ahsoka makes an interested noise. Rex passes her another slice.

“Didn’t know there were Mando fruit.”

“It’s the only one,” Rex says. The next few slices go in layers around the edges of the pie crust. “And most have forgotten that it was ours. We’re traditionally nomadic, so our traditional foods are generally spices, things that can be added to food of wherever we end up to make it uniquely ours. We’ve always had muja though, and we’ve planted it whenever we put down roots on a planet.” He slips her another slice. “Muja seeds can be stored for years, it grows quickly and is incredibly resilient. If you can breathe the air, you can probably grow muja.”

Under his hands, the rose pie takes shape. Muja is much softer than the pears that Nubians use in rose pie, so Rex’s knife has to be particularly sharp and the slices of fruit have to be particularly thin. It’s repetitive work, but calming. He pours a quick drizzle of uj’ayl2 over a finished layer and starts the next. There isn’t a recipe that calls for it, but Rex has a feeling that the flavors will go well together. They add uj’ayl to muja sauce on Mandalore, he’s read. He thinks it’ll be fine.

“Barriss won’t talk to me,” Ahsoka says finally.

Ah, one of those conversations then.

“Did she say why?”

“No.” What Rex can see of Ahsoka’s face from his periphery looks disgruntled. “There was a _lot_ more power-walking in the opposite direction than there was Actual Healthy Conversation.”

The next slice of fruit he passes her, he swirls in uj’ayl first. She takes it, considers then makes an approving noise. That’s one critic satisfied. She cranes her neck and he obliges with another slice, dipped in sauce.

“I don’t know what I _did_ ,” Ahsoka says. There’s annoyance there, but there’s genuine hurt under it.

Rex makes a low, considering rumble in his throat. “How do you know that you’ve done anything?”

“I don’t _know_!”

Rex has his suspicions. Gree’s been commenting recently about Barriss’ tendency to stare at Ahsoka’s arms when she’s not looking and go immediately tongue-tied. It’s not Rex’s place to tell Ahsoka that, though. That’s something she’ll have to figure out on her own.

If you always hold their blaster for them, Cody’s fond of saying, they’ll never learn to aim. Doesn’t mean that Rex can’t point her a little closer to the target.

“Have you tried apologizing?”

Even Rex, with all his experience with brothers, can’t parse what the sound Ahsoka makes means. “What if I didn’t do anything though?”

“But,” counters Rex, playing sith’s-advocate. “What if you _did_?”

He passes her another slice of syrupy fruit. Ahsoka sighs.

“Is it even okay to apologize if you don’t know what you’re apologizing for? You can’t really be sorry if you don’t know.”

It’s a pretty insightful observation, Rex thinks. Sometimes he forgets she’s growing up.

“I think you can be sorry you hurt someone,” he says, thinking about it carefully. “Even if you don’t know how. I think you can miss someone and want to know how to fix things between you. I think, if you say that, there’s a good chance the person might be willing to tell you what the issue is, and then you can work on fixing it.”

Ahsoka’s silent at that. She doesn’t automatically take the next slice of fruit Rex holds up. He has to jostle his shoulder first for her to notice. She takes it.

“How am I supposed to apologize if she’s running down corridors to get away from me?”

“Ahso’ika3,” Rex sighs. “You _do_ still have a comm unit don’t you.”

“Oh,” she says, sheepish. “Right. I’ll just-”

“Just in case, though I personally believe this shouldn’t have to be said.” He levels her as annoyed a look as he can when they’re nearly cheek to cheek. “If the general says _anything_ about levitating things to get her attention, you are fully cleared to deck him one.”

Ahsoka, gratifyingly, giggle-snorts hard at that.

“Your face is gonna freeze like that Rexter,” she teases and pokes at his chin. He swats her hand and presses another slice of fruit at her.

With one hand on the knife and another on the slice of fruit, the remainder of the muja he’s halfway through slicing is left on the cutting board, regrettably, unattended. Quick as a monkeylizard, Ahsoka palms it, slides down his back and dances her way to the door. She grins wide at him and eats it in smug, delicate little bites.

Rex glares, to cover up the satisfaction that he’s gotten her to willingly eat almost one whole serving of fruit today.

“Out,” he snaps. “Menace.”

She laughs again and flees before he can find something to throw at her.

“Oh, hey,” she pokes her head back in with a studied sort of casualness. “About when do you think you’ll be done in here?”

And there’s the general’s influence, Rex thinks. The Skywalker Subtlety is Strong in this one.

“Pie’ll be done in an hour,” he says flatly.

She gives him a double thumbs up. _Where_ did she pick that stupid-looking move up, and who is Rex going to make run laps for it?

“Out!” he repeats. She throws him a kark-you salute and disappears.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Big brother. Back  
> 2\. A thick scented syrup used in cooking. Back  
> 3\. A fond diminutive, equivalent to Little Ahsoka. Back  
> 
> 
> "She wasn't mad at me!" Ahsoka bellows across the hanger, to Barriss's visible alarm. "She just thinks I'm a stud!"


End file.
